# prisma v8.0.0-rc.4

- Product: prisma (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/prisma)
- Vendor: prisma
- Date: 2026-08-18
- Version: v8.0.0-rc.4
- Original notes: https://github.com/prisma/prisma/releases/tag/v8.0.0-rc.4
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/prisma/releases/v8.0.0-rc.4
- Labels: Pre-release

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

---

- **removed** — Remove support for prisma-next.config.ts config file and flat un-nested config shape; the CLI now only reads prisma.config.ts with the envelope shape
- **removed** — Retire the workspace prisma-next binary; the unified CLI runs ORM commands at the top level
- **fixed** — Fix contract emit crashing when the project root is a relative path by resolving it to an absolute path before passing to Node's createRequire()
- **changed** — Update init to scaffold definePrismaConfig instead of the deprecated defineConfig alias

#### v8.0.0-rc.4

The transition period for the old ORM config is over, and two fixes land for the consolidated `prisma` CLI stack. Most projects created before rc.2 need the config migration below; projects scaffolded by rc.2+ `init` need nothing.

The upgrade recipe for this hop: the [user recipe](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/tree/v8.0.0-rc.4/skills/prisma-next-upgrade/upgrades/8.0.0-rc.3-to-8.0.0-rc.4/).

##### Breaking changes

- **The deprecated config fallbacks are gone** — the CLI no longer reads `prisma-next.config.ts` and no longer accepts the flat (un-nested) config shape; both now fail loudly instead of warning. The only config read is `prisma.config.ts` in the envelope shape, and the workspace `prisma-next` binary is retired — the unified CLI runs the ORM commands at the top level. Rename the file, wrap your ORM options in `definePrismaConfig({ orm: ormConfig({ … }) })`, and keep `import 'dotenv/config'` if your config reads `process.env`. See the [user recipe](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/tree/v8.0.0-rc.4/skills/prisma-next-upgrade/upgrades/8.0.0-rc.3-to-8.0.0-rc.4/) for the exact rewrite. ([#30058](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/pull/30058))

  Before:

  ```ts
  // prisma-next.config.ts
  import { defineConfig } from '@prisma/orm-postgres/config';

  export default defineConfig({ contract: './contract.prisma', db: { connection: process.env['DATABASE_URL']! } });
  ```

  After:

  ```ts
  // prisma.config.ts
  import 'dotenv/config';
  import { definePrismaConfig } from '@prisma/cli-engine';
  import { defineConfig as ormConfig } from '@prisma/orm-postgres/config';

  export default definePrismaConfig({
    orm: ormConfig({ contract: './contract.prisma', db: { connection: process.env['DATABASE_URL']! } }),
  });
  ```

##### Fixes

- `contract emit` no longer crashes after writing its artifacts when the project root is a relative path — `validateContractDeps()` resolves the root before handing it to Node's `createRequire()`, which requires an absolute path. ([#30064](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/pull/30064))
- `init` scaffolds `definePrismaConfig`, the current name for the config marker in `@prisma/cli-engine` 0.2.0, instead of the deprecated `defineConfig` alias. ([#30064](https://github.com/prisma/prisma/pull/30064))